Farm Unit Week 4 October 23-27

Harvest Unit (Week 4)

Books This Week:

Possum's Harvest Moon

Frederick

Concept Questions For This Week:

-Preparing for Winter

-Nocturnal Animals

-Moon Phases

-What is a harvest soiree? Why should we celebrate harvest time?

Small Groups This Week:

Segmenting Farm Words: We will use words and segment the words we hear in simple sentences.  This is a pre-reading phonemic awareness skill. We will count the words we see and hear.  We will also rearrange the farm animal words.  

Nocturnal Animal Memory Game- Using pictures night animals from our story this week, we will play a memory game

Getting Ready for Winter Sorting- We will discuss how we prepare for the winter and how animals prepare for the winter.  We will then cut and sort pictures accordingly.  

Sorting Apples- In this fine motor activity, we will color then pinch tissue paper to sort the “apples” in the correct bushel

Moo Alphabet Game- Using letter cards, we will take turns drawing cards.  Each child will say the letter the cow says.  There are some cards where the cow says moo.  When a child draws that card everyone needs to stand and say MOO.  This will promote attention to the task even when it is not the child’s turn.  

Fine Motor Activity-Making Lanterns for our classroom to prepare for our harvest soiree (more info will follow to explain)

Handwriting Activities

Letter / Handwriting Small Groups (Letters this week are Tt and Ii)

Letter Activity: We will learn what these uppercase and lowercase letters look like.  

We will sort magnetic letters into groups of uppercase and lowercase groups for each letter.

We will hunt for them in our names and the names of our classmates.

We will use crayons to hunt for them on our papers.  

Centers

Art Table: Creating night sky using paint and toothbrushes

Block Area: blocks

Sensory Table: Cleaning muddy farm animals

Book Area: books about farms and growing

Easel: painting with primary colors

Writing Table: Party Notes

Dramatic Play: Pizza Shop

Puzzles and Manipulatives: farm related puzzles

Science Table: Gerbils from the Science Center(drawing pictures and making observations)

Rug- Legos

Preschool Life Skills

Every week we will be reinforcing previous skills and introducing new skills. Some weeks we will spend more time with a previous skill before moving to a new skill.

New Life Skill:

"When I give you an instructions, do them right away." (2-3 step directions)

Previous Life Skills:

"When a teacher calls your name, you stop, look at the speaker, and say "yes".

"When I give you an instruction, do it right away."

Harvest Unit Week 3 October 16-20

Books This Week

The Little Red Hen

Apple Farmer Annie

Concept Questions For This Week:

-How does food get from the farm to your house?

-What can Apples

-Seasons on the farm

-Scarecrows on the farm

Small Groups This Week:

-Letters in our name/letters not in our name apple trees- We will be creating apple trees using dot stickers (fine motor skill) to pull off and then adding them to trees.  If the letters are not in our names they will have them fall out of the tree (ie. place them on the ground under the tree)

-Syllable Segmenting- We are beginning to segment sounds in words by clapping.  For example, farm has 1 clap and carrot has 2 claps.  We will practice this by staying word together that are related to the farm. Then we will cut and sort pictures on our papers.  

-Following Directions Farm Activity-  We will need to listen carefully to our teachers directions in order to complete our farm pictures.   For example, put the pig between the barn and the pond.  Positional concepts will also be reinforced.

How many in the barn- Reinforcing 1:1 correspondence and accurate counting, we will use farm animals to see how many animals are in the barn.  

Journals- We will continue to write in our journals.  We will first discuss in our groups who we like to play with.   Then we will draw a picture of who we like to play with and try to write our friends name.  We are reminding them that our pictures must match what our words say just like in books that we read together.  

Fill the Cup Race-  We will take turns rolling a number cube.  After we roll the cube we will identify the number, then count that many small blocks.  We will add the blocks to the group cup and keep adding blocks taking turns until we fill the cup.  

Handwriting Activities

Letter / Handwriting Small Groups (Letters this week are Ee and Hh)

Letter Activity: We will learn what these uppercase and lowercase letters look like.  

We will sort magnetic letters into groups of uppercase and lowercase groups for each letter.

We will hunt for them in our names and the names of our classmates.

We will use crayons to hunt for them on our papers.  

Centers

Art Table:Making our farm animal books continued

Block Area:blocks and farm animals

Sensory Table: sorting pig tails(curled pipe cleaners) in mud(black beans)

Book Area: books about farms and growing

Easel: painting with primary colors

Writing Table: Farmer To Do Lists

Dramatic Play: Apple Pie Bakery

Puzzles and Manipulatives: farm related puzzles

Science Table: Gerbils from the Science Center(drawing pictures and making observations)

Preschool Life Skills

Every week we will be reinforcing previous skills and introducing new skills. Some weeks we will spend more time with a previous skill before moving to a new skill.

New Life Skill:

"When I give you an instructions, do them right away." (2-3 step directions)

Previous Life Skills:

"When a teacher calls your name, you stop, look at the speaker, and say "yes".

"When I give you an instruction, do it right away."

Social Thinking Curriculum

During the course of the school year, we will be using a series of 6 books.  

Book 1:  Thinking Thoughts and Feeling Feelings.

Concepts Include:

What is a thought?

Your brain is a thought maker

What is a feeling?

Your heart is a feelings keeper

A feeling is something that happens in your body

Farm Chores in the Cub Cadets

(Collecting Eggs and Selling Eggs at a Farm Stand)

(Milking Cows)

During our Harvest unit, our class has been busy doing farm chores.  In our dramatic play area, we had a hen house where we need to collect the eggs from under the hens.  After we collect the eggs in a basket, we then transferred the eggs to cartons.  Then we put the eggs in a farm stand so we can then sell the “farm fresh” eggs.  

We also had been learning why farmers need animals on the farm.  The children have had the experience to “milk” cows.  We created cows and placed “milk” (white paint with water) in rubber gloves.  A small hole was made in the gloves and children had to squeeze the milk out while balancing on a peg stool.  It was fun doing chores on the farm. 

Harvest Week 2 (October 10-13)

BACK TO SCHOOL NIGHT: WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 11 AT 6:30

Harvest Unit (Week 2)

Books This Week:

The Little Red Hen

Otis

Concept Questions For This Week:

-Where does our food come from?

-How do machines help farmers?

-How food is prepared?

-What happens to wheat before we can eat it?

Small Groups This Week:

Memory Game- Using Little Red Hen vocabulary words, we will play a memory game.  

Chase the Farmer Sequence- We will be working on patterns in groups using farm animal manipulatives. Then we will cut and then glue farm animals on a strip to show a pattern.  At the end of the pattern, we will put a farmer which is inspired by our story Farmer Duck.  In the book, the animals chased the farmer off the farm for not helping the duck with the jobs on the farm.  

-Sorting Tools used on the farm and not on the farm.  After discussing the tools we will then sort the pictures on our papers.

-More and Less Gardens- Using math vocabulary, we will create 2 gardens.  Then we will count each garden and name the garden that has more and less.  

-Roll A Vegetable Graphing game- Using a cube with pictures of vegetables, we will each take turns rolling the cube and then recording the picture we rolled or our friend rolled.  At the end, we will discuss what vegetable we rolled the most, least, and if any were the same.  

-Journals- We will be drawing pictures in our journals and discussing our family with our peers at the small group by showing their friends their pictures.  

Letter / Handwriting Small Groups (Letters this week are Ee and Hh)

Letter Activity: We will learn what these uppercase and lowercase letters look like.  

We will sort magnetic letters into groups of uppercase and lowercase groups for each letter.

We will hunt for them in our names and the names of our classmates.

We will use crayons to hunt for them on our papers.  

Centers

Sensory Table: Dirt and garden stakes

Art Table: Farm Books for each animal

Blocks: Creating Gardens with blocks

Book Area: books about farms and growing

Writing Table: Farmer To Do Lists

Dramatic Play: Hen House

Puzzles and Manipulatives: farm related puzzles

Science Table: Gerbils

Preschool Life Skills

Every week we will be reinforcing previous skills and introducing new skills. Some weeks we will spend more time with a previous skill before moving to a new skill.

New Life Skill: "When I give you an instruction, do it right away."

Previous Life Skill: "When a teacher calls your name, you stop, look at the speaker, and say "yes".

Social Thinking Curriculum

During the course of the school year, we will be using a series of 6 books.  

Book 1:  Thinking Thoughts and Feeling Feelings.

Concepts Include:

What is a thought?

Your brain is a thought maker

What is a feeling?

Your heart is a feelings keeper

A feeling is something that happens in your body